Various types of thermal imaging devices are known in the art. These include staring arrays, parallel scan devices and serial scan devices. Serial scan devices which employ a plurality of detectors arranged in a linear array and interconnected to provide time delay and integration are described in the Laakmann Patent, Israel Patent 39,389.
There is described in an article entitled "An Integrating Detector for Serial Scan Thermal Imaging, by C. T. Elliott, et al, Infrared Physics, Vol 22, pp 31-42, 1982, the use of a Mercury Cadmium Telluride "SPRITE" detector for thermal imaging. The SPRITE detector is operative to perform time delay and integration within the detector material itself.
The SPRITE detector itself is described in U.K. Patents 2119508, published Oct. 26, 1983, and 2127619 published on Apr. 11, 1984 and in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,572,953; 4,679,063 and 4,691,107.
One disadvantage in the use of the SPRITE detector in a scanning thermal imaging device is that the scan velocity across the detector is non-linear. Accordingly, the time delay and integration provided by the SPRITE detector involves a corresponding inaccuracy.